Halloween Book Review: Maplecroft, by Cherie Priest

[missroserose]

Ambrosia N. Rose
Amateur Book Reviewer, Goodreads.com

~*~

24 October 2014


The Lovecraftian mythos has, in the Internet age, suffered from the sort of social watering-down that any popular horror eventually does. I think especially, here, of Frankenstein's monster: once a literate, intelligent creature capable of terrifying its creator with its elaborately enacted plans for revenge; now a shambling, zombified, bolt-necked hulk that inspires endless cards and candies at this time of year. In the same game of popular-culture Telephone that has dubbed that unfortunate creature with its creator's name, Lovecraft's age-old terrors beneath the waves have become punchlines; the inspiration for dozens of satirical comics, stories, and merchandise.

Our collective desire to create reflections of our shadow selves having summoned these creatures into our artistic consciousness, we proceed to deliberately misunderstand them, recasting them as ridiculous, laughable, so that we may better reassure ourselves that of course, only other people see their darker natures reflected in these silly dumb beasts.

We, being shining beacons of virtue, have nothing to fear.



Forgive me, for this is meant to be a book review, not a cynical anthropological treatise. But if I may attempt to justify my initial digression, I meant it as a roundabout compliment to this manuscript. Cherie Priest clearly understands what it is that made Lovecraft's initial short stories, despite their execrable writing and subsequent bastardizations, catch hold of people's imaginations in the first place: the unshakable belief in the accuracy and reliability of our perceptions despite clear evidence to the contrary; the absolute terror at the thought of that sanctity being violated by outside influences we literally cannot conceive of; the universal fear that those forces might not be external at all, but exist in the form of our own unconscious, only metaphorically represented by the depths of the ocean.

But first, the summary. Lizbeth Andrew Borden, wealthy spinster, social pariah, and murderess in popular legend if not legal status, lives a reclusive life with her consumptive older sister Emma, studying a series of phenomena that have led her to believe that the lives and minds of the residents of her hometown are in serious, if frustratingly nonspecific, danger. Their situation makes finding confidantes difficult; eventually, they enlist the help of Dr. Seabury, a local physician still suffering the psychological ramifications of the Civil War, in discovering precisely what the threat is and how to stop it. The story is told from a rotating perspective, often through journal entries and letters; a commonly-criticized technique, but it works well here, as social isolation is both a theme and a primary antagonist in the story, and seeing each character apply their very different backgrounds and worldviews in an attempt to solve the same mystery engenders a blind-men-describing-the-elephant sort of hopelessness...even before the more complex and delicate effects of the ocean-borne threat become clear.



It is in this last respect, especially, that Maplecroft proves itself uncannily perceptive into human nature. Yes, Lizbeth discovers objects that induce obsession, summon monsters and, given time and exposure, cause outright insanity; but this danger can be measured, quantified, and addressed - often with her axe. It serves as a red herring of sorts to distract from the subtler effects that this terror enacts upon those who would fight it; namely, the quiet magnification of their darker emotions. Emma's resentment of her helplessness, Seabury's despair at a cruel and senseless world, Lizbeth's guilt over her lover; these insidious menaces are far likelier to destroy our heroes even as they begin to find a pattern to the mystery. Are they being amplified by a malevolent force? Or merely exacerbated by isolation and stress? Either way, they come dangerously close to dissolving the fragile social bonds that are the one human defense against any large-scale threat.

If I had one quibble with the narrative, it might be that the heavy reliance on atmosphere leads to a truncated-feeling ending, with several plot threads left dangling. Still, given the themes of the story, this doesn't feel entirely out of place. This is not a tragedy, in the strictest sense of the term, but it bears many of the same hallmarks, of free will being a moot point in the face of certain events and character interactions. And victory, if it is to be obtained, if it can even be identified, will not be achieved without cost. A

Comments

[vatine]

I, too, felt that the cruelly abrupt ending left a feeling of reading border-line unsatisfied. However, I was somewhat gladdened by the fact that the book clearly says "The Borden Dispatches" in the place where otherwise one would expect to see a series title.

Seems I read this back in September or so.